Drive Car of the Year 2024 – Best Luxury Off-Road SUV under $150K

Find out what cars are eligible for the Drive Car of the Year 2024 – Best Luxury Off-Road SUV under $150K category

Family Cars

Drive Team

12:0019 November 2023

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Over the next few weeks, we'll be explaining all the categories and contenders for Drive Car of the Year 2024. Testing is currently underway, with the final winners to be announced early next year.

Drive Car of the Year 2024

Now in its 18th year, the annual Drive Car of the Year awards program continues to be the Australian new car buyer’s most trusted advisor.

At Drive, we test drive more than 200 new cars every year, evaluating each against its innate promise to sort the best from the rest. We divide the 400-plus new passenger cars, SUVs, 4WDs and utes into 19 price-banded categories focused on the end-user, then analyse the strengths and weaknesses of every car to find the cream of the automotive crop.

Drive Car of the Year 2024 is a go!

Drive Car of the Year Overview

Drive Car of the Year 2023 winners

Drive Car of the Year 2024: Best Luxury Off-Road SUV under $150K

Here we’re looking at large and extra-large prestige 4WDs under $150K with no-nonsense capability for adventurous Australian families – who want more style and status than lower-priced vehicles can offer, with no compromise.

This is a category that might look familiar from 2023. We knew it as Best Off-Road SUV last year, but is now price banded and so is considered as a new category, Drive Car of the Year Best Luxury Off-Road SUV Under $150K. It includes a tidy array of luxury off-road models, now all under consideration for their ability to go mud-plugging with the best out in the bush while also scrubbing up to be not the least bit out of place when delivering its occupants to the opera in town.

These are vehicles that, despite their cost, have all the mechanical and electronic systems to get them as far off-road as possible as a standard vehicle can. Some have a particularly off-road focus, while others are designed to be just as equally at home on the blacktop. There is no lack of safety or technology for most of them, or indeed luxury equipment.

Whichever way it goes, it’s going to be a tight contest.

There are some clever and interesting candidates this year that might prove a strong threat to what is, despite the category shift, last year’s winner, the Land Rover Defender.

There’s the Ineos Grenadier, such an interesting take on the iconic boxy SUV and to many eyes the spiritual successor to the original Land Rover; then, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, now having moved up well into luxury status with most models well beyond $100K, while the evergreen Nissan Patrol has been significantly rebooted and armoured for off-road work as the Warrior by local outfit Premcar. The LandCruiser 300 needs no introduction and surely must be a readers’ favourite to win this category as Toyota’s best and biggest SUV.

Because the Drive Car of the Year Best Off-Road SUV Under $150K is, basically a new category this year (last year the category had no price cap), everything that meets the definition of off-road and is under the price barrier of $150,000 is eligible for consideration.

Which cars are eligible for this category?

Drive’s rules require that, for a car to be eligible, it must:

Be all-new or significantly updated,
Be on sale by December 31, 2023, and
Retail examples be made available for Drive to road test before that cut-off date.

Eligible	Ineligible
- Cars that are all-new or significantly updated since they last contested Drive Car of the Year. - New categories are open to all cars that fit category requirements. - Last year’s winner is an automatic inclusion.	- These cars meet category requirements but have not changed since they previously contested Drive Car of the Year and are not a carry-over winner.
Ineos Grenadier Jeep Grand Cherokee Land Rover Defender Land Rover Discovery Land Rover Discovery Sport Land Rover Range Rover Sport Lexus LX Mercedes-Benz G-Class Nissan Patrol Warrior Range Rover Toyota Landcruiser Toyota Prado	None – new category

What are the next steps?

The winner of the 2024 Drive Car of the Year Best Luxury Off-Road SUV under $150K will be announced in February 2024.

Before then, we will announce the finalists, all of which deliver on the buyer’s expectations for cost-effective urban motoring. One thing is certain: this category promises to be one of the toughest confronting our 11 experienced judges.